Hi there, I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

So a listener commented the other day on Twitter that on two completely different recent

episodes of this show, one about technology and the other one about jellyfish, the same

idea came up, that stories play a powerful

role in shaping our real lives. This idea comes up so often in so many different forms and

contexts that I've started to think of it as maybe the crucial truth for understanding why

people do the things we do. The stories we wrap around ourselves, our neighbors, our children, the invisible

stories we struggle against. Nobody I know of understands this better, nor writes more cleanly and

poetically about these struggles than my guest today, Daniel Alarcon. He's the co-founder of Radio Ambulante,

a Spanish language podcast, now on NPR, and he's a celebrated author of novels

and short stories, including his newly published collection, The King is Always Above the People.

Welcome to Think Again.

Thanks, Jason. It's good beer.

Yeah, it's good to have you.

So, first of all, when did you start writing? What was the real the real i mean we all write in school but like

when was the moment where you were like okay i'm i want to be writing something because i just want to

write it yeah i have i have the memory of always having wanted to write um you know from you, you know, eight, nine years old.

Okay.

I was a real nerdy kid, read a lot.

I had really two obsessions.

One was soccer and the other one was reading.

Okay.

...